Causation

Causation occupies a contested and generative position across the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as a bedrock methodological assumption and a site of profound theoretical strain. The tradition inherits from Stoic philosophy an elaborate doctrine of causal nexus — fate as providentially ordered chain of causes — that Chrysippus and his successors elaborated into what amounts to a compatibilist determinism: actions and characters are both caused, yet moral responsibility is preserved because the proximate causes of action are internal assents. Jung inherits this tension and radicalises it: his theory of synchronicity is explicitly designed to mark out a domain where causal explanation fails, where apparently chance events resist integration into the causal series. For Jung, causality is not abolished but relativised — its absolute validity questioned, its borders patrolled by the acausal. McGilchrist extends this critique by invoking Schiller’s challenge that the very isolation of discrete causal factors may be inherently invalid when the Becoming of things constitutes an integral whole. Thompson and biological theorists introduce downward causation and circular causal loops to resist purely mechanistic bottom-up accounts of organism and mind. Ricoeur, working in the philosophy of action, interrogates the relationship between human causation and material causation, the anthropomorphic charge in mechanical models, and the irreducibility of intentional explanation to event causation. What unites these otherwise disparate inquiries is a shared suspicion that linear, sequential models of causation are insufficient — psychologically, biologically, and cosmologically.

In the library 21 passages

Would not the idea of causation be inherently invalid, just because it isolates certain factors? One way to think of a cause is ‘that without which something would not be’

McGilchrist, citing Schiller, argues that isolating causal factors from the integral whole of Becoming renders the concept of causation inherently invalid, before pivoting to Aristotle’s fourfold typology as a more adequate framework.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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Would not the idea of causation be inherently invalid, just because it isolates certain factors? One way to think of a cause is ‘that without which something would not be’

A duplicate passage confirming that McGilchrist’s central challenge to linear causation rests on the claim that any dissection of continuous process into discrete causes falsifies the whole.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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if the causal principle is only relatively valid, then it follows that even though in the vast majority of cases an apparently chance series can be causally explained, there must still remain a number of cases which do not show any causal connection.

Jung argues that granting only relative validity to the causal principle necessarily generates a residue of genuinely acausal events, which synchronicity is tasked with addressing.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis

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At the beginning of each world cycle a causal nexus is providentially planned and initiated, in virtue of w

The passage establishes Chrysippus’s strong determinism — a providentially ordained causal nexus inaugurating each world cycle — as the fullest Stoic articulation of fate-as-causation.

A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987thesis

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a far more fundamental causal relation operates within any single body between its active and passive aspects or components… At the most basic level, this is the causal operation of the active principle god, on the passive principle matter

Sedley reconstructs the Stoic internal causal ontology in which the active pneumatic principle causally operates upon passive matter, constituting the cosmological foundation of their causal theory.

A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987thesis

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There are indeed two sources of causation, one internal and one external. But both can be fated.

Inwood refines the Stoic compatibilist position by arguing that even internal assent — the proximate cause of action — may itself be fated, complicating the distinction between self-caused character and externally caused action.

Brad Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985thesis

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causation between particular events then is in danger of losing not only its paradoxical character but even its power of discrimination… one can no longer tell if it is the result of incipient anthropomorphism that we see the bulldozer push

Ricoeur argues that polysemous extension of the cause-concept threatens its discriminatory power and raises the unresolved question of whether human action-causation is derived from or foundational to physical causation.

Ricoeur, Paul, Oneself as Another, 1992thesis

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To this double thing- the particular configuration of particular beings- there accrues often the twofold power, that of causation and that of indication, but sometimes only that of indication.

Plotinus distinguishes causation from indication as analytically separable powers that may or may not coincide in any given configuration, establishing an ontological distinction crucial for later debates on astrological and synchronistic claims.

Plotinus, The Six Enneads, 270thesis

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The passage of time is like the unwinding of a rope, bringing about nothing new and unrolling each stage in its turn.

The Stoic image of time as an unwinding rope expresses the doctrine that future events are fully contained within the prior causal series, leaving no room for genuinely novel causation.

A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting

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providence will be god’s will, and furthermore his will is the series of causes. In virtue of being his will it is providence. In virtue of also being the series of causes it gets the additional name ‘fate’.

Calcidius reports the Stoic identification of divine providence with the series of causes, collapsing the distinction between causal fate and teleological design.

A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting

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The organization of an organism comprises numerous circular causal loops, such that every component is definable only in terms of the total organization to which it belongs, whereas the total organization is definable only by specifying those components.

Thompson, following Rosen, argues that organisms are distinguished from machines precisely by their self-referential circular causal structure, which cannot be reduced to linear bottom-up causation.

Thompson, Evan, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007supporting

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No matter the stage of psychological development humanity may be in, the innate, preexistent archetypal pattern of causality by necessity manifests itself in the human’s attempt to understand his surroundings.

Edinger, following Jung, argues that the premise of causality is an archetypal pattern built into human cognition, making causal attribution a psychologically necessary act prior to and independent of its empirical accuracy.

Edinger, Edward F., The New God-Image: A Study of Jung’s Key Letters Concerning the Evolution of the Western God-Image, 1996supporting

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The energic point of view on the other hand is in essence final; the event is traced back from effect to cause on the assumption that some kind of energy underlies the changes in phenomena

Jung contrasts the mechanistic causal view — which traces events forward through efficient causes — with the energic-final view, which reverses the arrow to read from effect back to the gradient of potential, implying a teleological supplement to linear causation.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting

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the misevaluation is causally prior. But the repeated experience of emotions may also have an effect on the evaluative belief, causing it to become hardened into a trait of character.

Graver traces a bidirectional causal relationship in Stoic psychology between evaluative beliefs and emotional responses, showing how character traits are formed through recursive causal loops rather than simple linear determination.

Margaret Graver, Stoicism and Emotion, 2007supporting

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On the Stoic view determinism and moral responsibility are not merely compatible, they actually presuppose each other.

The passage articulates the Stoic compatibilist thesis that causal determinism and moral responsibility are not merely consistent but mutually required, because the causal chain that constitutes fate is also the chain that constitutes rational agency.

A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting

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there are, of course, particularly in any complex society, endless problems that arise about this point, such as the allocation of causality between several agents

Williams notes the juridical and ethical complications that arise when causality must be distributed among multiple agents, connecting ancient Greek and modern legal treatments of contributory causation.

Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity, 1993supporting

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Thus Jung confined himself out of prudence to speaking of a transcendent cosmic background (unus mundus) so as not to prejudice further research into the synchronicity principle.

Von Franz contextualises Jung’s caution in postulating a non-causal background for synchronistic phenomena, noting the epistemological difficulty of verifying acausal meaning without projecting it subjectively.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014aside

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The essay itself is difficult and certainly deeply flawed by a misguided effort at statistical analysis… Synchronicity and Causality

Stein introduces Jung’s synchronicity essay as deeply implicated in the problem of causality, noting that the attempt to support acausal claims through statistical method is itself internally contradictory.

Stein, Murray, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998aside

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all the moving forces and circumstances, all inner and outer connexions, motives, situations, causes and effects, in short the whole dependent origination, the very structure of reality, is clearly perceived.

Govinda presents the Buddhist notion of dependent origination as a causal totality that, when fully perceived in enlightenment, is no longer experienced as fixed necessity but as supreme freedom.

Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960aside

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